Los Angeles Lakers Rumors | Hoops Rumors

Medina On Lakers Offseason, Roster

April 14th, 2015 at 8:07pm CST by Eddie Scarito

Mark Medina of The Los Angeles Daily News reported earlier today that the Lakers will explore potential trades for swingman Nick Young this summer. In a separate piece, Medina runs down where each of the players on Los Angeles’ roster stands as the team heads into the offseason. Here are some of the highlights…

Ed Davis is almost assuredly going to opt out of his deal and become an unrestricted free agent this summer, Medina notes. The Lakers are interested in inking him to a long-term deal as long as the cap hit is a reasonable amount, Medina adds.
There is mutual interest between the team and Wayne Ellington in having the player return to Los Angeles next season, Medina notes. While Ellington views the Lakers as his top choice, he desires long-term security in his next deal, Medina adds. The guard will be an unrestricted free agent when the season ends.
Los Angeles has little interest in bringing back Carlos Boozer, and the player is likely to seek out a team on which he can have a larger role, the Daily News scribe relays.
Wesley Johnson‘s potential continues to intrigue the Lakers, but the team is frustrated with his inconsistent play, Medina notes. How well the team fares in the draft and free agency will dictate whether or not the swingman is re-signed, Medina opines.
The Lakers don’t view Jeremy Lin as a great fit for the team’s system, and it’s not clear yet if Los Angeles has any interest in re-signing the point guard. For his part, Lin will consider returning to the Lakers if the team has interest, but he will place a higher priority on finding a team that runs a pick-and-roll oriented offense, the Daily News scribe notes.
Los Angeles still hasn’t made a decision regarding Jordan Hill‘s team option worth $9MM for next season. The big man’s time with the Lakers could be at an end if the team decides it wants to maximize its cap space, Medina writes.
The team expects injured rookie Julius Randle to play in this year’s summer league, Medina notes. Randle’s rookie campaign ended 14 minutes into his first regular season contest when he suffered a broken leg.
Ryan Kelly did not feel comfortable with the Lakers using him as a small forward at times this season, and the team plans to use him at power forward, his natural position, more often next season, Medina relays. Kelly appeared in 51 games and averaged 6.3 points and 2.8 rebounds in 23.4 minutes per contest this season.

Lakers To Explore Nick Young Trades

April 14th, 2015 at 3:12pm CST by Chuck Myron

The Lakers will “shop [Nick] Young around” this summer after a subpar season and conflict with coach Byron Scott, as Mark Medina of the Los Angeles Daily News hears (Twitter link). Medina’s wording is a bit softer in a slideshow in which he says the Lakers will likely entertain trade offers, but the situation nonetheless appears to have changed from when Young signed a four-year deal worth about $21.326MM to remain with the Lakers last summer. Young said today in his exit interview with the Los Angeles media that he’s confident he will be back with the Lakers next season, Medina notes (Twitter link).

Young also said today that he and Scott are “cool” and “on the same page,” according to Medina (on Twitter). The 29-year-old, who turns 30 in June, seemed unreceptive last week when he addressed advice from Scott that he should become more of a complete player, and he said that he believes Scott was targeting him for criticism. Scott had suggested that there were Lakers players he “wouldn’t want to be in a fox hole with,” a remark he later backtracked from and claimed was a product of frustration.

In any case, Young slumped to a career-worst 36.6% field goal percentage, and his 13.4 points per game were well off last season’s 17.9 PPG mark. He hasn’t played since February 22nd because of a fractured knee cap.

That performance stands to complicate trade scenarios, as would an opposing team’s insistence on a draft pick in return, as Medina writes in the slideshow. The Lakers owe their first-round pick to the Sixers this year if it’s not in the top five, and a protected first-rounder they owe the Magic will come due two years after they convey the pick to the Sixers, RealGM shows. Young will be eligible to be traded as soon as Thursday, since the Lakers will miss the playoffs, but offseason trades usually don’t start happening until June.

Pacific Notes: Cousins, Boozer, Hawes

April 14th, 2015 at 10:59am CST by Chuck Myron

The Kings have a budding superstar in DeMarcus Cousins, but coach George Karl admits that no one on Sacramento’s roster would be off-limits for the right trade, as Bill Herenda of CSNBayArea.com relays. Obviously, the Kings aren’t looking to trade their best player, but Karl’s comments jibe with what a person familiar with the coach’s thinking told Bleacher Report’s Howard Beck in February about Sacramento’s willingness to make deals.

“I’ve had some great players and I’ve never had one player that I have said is untradeable,” Karl said, as Herenda notes. “You always got to be ready for the possibility of a great trade that could come your way. I know I respect him [Cousins] a tremendous amount … I think our give and take and our communication has been almost on a daily basis … until we can really get to a special place together, I think we’ve got to continue to communicate, what he wants and what I want.”

With the offseason beginning in two days for Sacramento, there’s more on the Kings amid the latest from the Pacific Division:

Aaron Bruski of NBCSports.com has begun hearing more speculation about Cousins trades among sources, but Bruski cautions that there’s nothing concrete or in the works (Twitter links).
Carlos Boozer moved to the bench about a month into the regular season and he hasn’t been the sort of contributor the Lakers imagined when they claimed him off amnesty waivers this summer, writes Mark Medina of the Los Angeles Daily News. Coach Byron Scott is nonetheless pleased with the way he “hasn’t rocked the boat” since his benching, Medina notes, adding that it nonetheless seems unlikely that the power forward, a free agent this summer, will return.
Spencer Hawes admits he isn’t having the sort of season he envisioned when he joined the Clippers on a four-year deal for the full value of the mid-level exception this past summer, observes Broderick Turner of the Los Angeles Times. “It’s been bad,” he said of his performance. “There’s no other way to put it. You just can’t let it defeat you when you go through the low stretches.”

DeMarre Carroll Interested In Knicks

April 14th, 2015 at 8:56am CST by Chuck Myron

Soon-to-be free agent forward DeMarre Carroll acknowledged interest in the Knicks and hinted that he wouldn’t mind signing with the Lakers or Clippers, either, in a response to a question about whether he would give a great deal of consideration to the Knicks, reports Marc Berman of the New York Post. The sixth-year veteran who turns 29 in July has blossomed while on a two-year, $5MM contract with the Hawks that expires at season’s end.

“Most definitely,” Carroll said. “When guys talk about playing in certain places — they talk about Madison Square Garden and Staples Center. Those two places. New York has a lot to offer but at the end of the season, I’ll let my agent do that. We’ll keep our options and hopefully it will work out for the best.’’

Knicks coach Derek Fisher likes Carroll, and his defense in particular, a source tells Berman. Carroll is a proficient rebounder, grabbing 5.4 per game this season, but his defense is a minus, according to both ESPN’s Real Plus/Minus and Basketball-Reference’s Box Plus/Minus. Those metrics show him as a better offensive player, and he’s transformed his attack in Atlanta, shooting nearly six times as many three-pointers the past two seasons as the rest of his NBA career put together. He’s made 39.6% of his shots from behind the arc this year and is averaging a career-high 12.7 points per game.

Berman figures the Mark Bartelstein client will command a starting salary around $5MM, but Grantland’s Zach Lowe would be surprised if he doesn’t see more than that (Twitter link). Chris Herring of The Wall Street Journal speculates that Carroll’s in line for $6MM salaries (Twitter link). In any case, it would seem he’s due a significant raise on the more than $2.442MM he’s making this season. The Hawks only have Carroll’s Early Bird rights, so unless they use cap space, they’d be limited to a starting salary of a figure that will likely come in just shy of $6MM when the league’s average salary is computed during the July Moratorium. Still, Atlanta, just like the Knicks and Lakers, is in line to open a significant amount of cap room this summer, depending in large measure on what happens with Carroll and Paul Millsap. The Clippers are unlikely to have the sort of cap flexibility it would take to land Carroll.

Steve Kyler of Basketball Insiders wrote more than a month ago that it appeared the Hawks were looking for an upgrade at small forward, where Carroll plays. Still, it would be tough to envision the Hawks not having at least some interest in re-signing a player who has found his niche within their system. The team on Monday awarded Carroll the Jason Collier Memorial Trophy for his work as a community ambassador, as Chris Vivlamore of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution notes, so clearly the club is high on his character.

Lakers Sign Vander Blue

April 13th, 2015 at 7:58pm CST by Chuck Myron

7:58pm: The Lakers have made the signing of Blue official, according to the team’s website. There was no mention of a corresponding move, so evidently the Lakers have used the hardship provision again, as the team’s roster is once more at 16 players.

1:01pm: The Lakers have plans to sign Vander Blue for the rest of the season, a league source tells Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports. The team was reportedly about to re-sign Dwight Buycks instead, but he broke his right hand on Sunday, the final day of his 10-day contract. It’s not immediately clear whether the deal is just for the team’s final two games this season or if it covers next season, too, though the injury-riddled Lakers presumably wouldn’t have to waive anyone if they signed Blue only for the balance of 2014/15. The team has 15 players on the roster already, but the Lakers are in position for the league to grant a hardship exception, which would allow a 16th player as long as he’s on only a rest-of-season deal.

The 10-day deal with Buycks came via hardship, and the Lakers previously used hardship exceptions to sign Jabari Brown to a pair of 10-day deals before waiving Steve Nash to accommodate a longer-term arrangement with Brown. Jordan Clarkson and Brown are the only two healthy Lakers guards, so Blue, a 6’5″ shooting guard, will provide much-needed depth. The team only has eight total healthy players, and none of them are small forwards, so it wouldn’t be surprising to see Blue get some time at the three position.

Blue has been averaging 23.3 points, 5.4 rebounds and 5.4 assists in 37.3 minutes per game for the Lakers D-League affiliate this season, nailing 41.6% of his three-point attempts during his 49 appearances. All of those numbers are improvements over his D-League stats from last season. Blue is a one-year NBA veteran thanks to a single 10-day contract he signed with the Celtics in January 2014, and he scored five points in 15 minutes of action during three games with Boston. The 22-year-old also signed a non-guaranteed deal with the Wizards before this season, but Washington waived him in early October, well before opening night.

The Lakers are limited to the minimum-salary exception, so even if they are signing him for more than just this season and waiving another player to make that happen, Blue’s contract couldn’t stretch beyond next season.

Pacific Notes: Karl, Barnes, Lakers

April 13th, 2015 at 2:58pm CST by Chuck Myron

Magic Johnson casts a shadow over the Lakers organization even though he’s no longer a part of it in any way, having sold his minority ownership share, as Bleacher Report’s Kevin Ding examines. Johnson doesn’t have a relationship with any of the members of the Buss family who control the franchise aside from Jeanie, the team’s Board of Governors representative, with whom he remains close, according to Ding. The Busses have always insisted that the team isn’t for sale, but Johnson would be a prime candidate to front a bid for the Lakers if they ever became available, Ding writes. There’s more on the Lakers amid our look around the Pacific Division:

George Karl admits he has a great degree of fondness for his former players on the Nuggets, observes Jason Jones of The Sacramento Bee. Bleacher Report’s Howard Beck heard in February that Karl would love for the Kings to acquire Ty Lawson or any of the players he coached on the 2012/13 Nuggets, his last NBA team, but it’s uncertain how much influence, if any, Karl has under new basketball operations chief Vlade Divac.
Defense, leadership and career-best 36.7% three-point shooting this year are the hallmarks of what’s been perhaps Matt Barnes‘ best NBA season, as Ben Bolch of the Los Angeles Times details. The timing is fortuitous for the Clippers small forward, whose salary of almost $3.543MM for next season is only guaranteed for $1MM.
Baxter Holmes of ESPNLosAngeles.com examines the conundrum the Lakers face as Rajon Rondo looms as a likely free agent target while incumbent point guard Jordan Clarkson exceeds expectations.

Lakers Planned To Re-Sign Buycks Before Injury

April 13th, 2015 at 10:35am CST by Chuck Myron

Point guard Dwight Buycks will be unavailable for the rest of the regular season thanks to a broken right hand he suffered in Sunday’s game, tweets Mike Trudell of Lakers.com, and the timing of the injury was especially unfortunate for Buycks. The Lakers were about to re-sign him, as his 10-day contract expired overnight, according to Eric Pincus of the Los Angeles Times (Twitter link). Coach Byron Scott said before Sunday’s game that he expected the team to re-up with Buycks for the final two games of the season.

The Lakers are down to eight healthy players, notes Bill Oram of the Orange County Register, who confirms that the team planned to re-sign Buycks before his injury. The team only has two healthy guards and no healthy small forwards, Pincus tweets, so it seems doubtful the Lakers would use up roster room on another injured player. The Lakers have a full 15-man roster, so the notion that the team was to re-sign Buycks signaled that the league was ready to once more grant the Lakers an extra roster spot via the hardship provision, given their multitude of injuries. Conceivably, the Lakers will seek to sign a different player using the hardship exception, though it’s unclear if they indeed plan to do so.

Pincus raised the possibility that the Lakers would have signed Buycks to a deal that included next season (Twitter link), a move they couldn’t have used the hardship exception to make, as Pincus pointed out earlier (on Twitter). The Lakers would have had to waive a player to accommodate any deal for Buycks that went beyond this season.

Buycks spent last year with the Raptors, but he’s been well-traveled this season, spending time in China, Spain, and with the Thunder’s D-League affiliate before signing his 10-day deal with the Lakers. The 26-year-old averaged 8.7 points in 20.5 minutes per game in six appearances for the purple-and-gold.

Western Notes: Hill, Buycks, Wolves

April 12th, 2015 at 8:24pm CST by Will Joseph

Lakers coach Byron Scott believes Jordan Hill, who will enter the final year of his contract with the team next season, needs to change his offseason preparation to avoid crashing at the end of the season like he did this year, Mark Medina of the Los Angeles Daily News writes. Hill, 27, is averaging career-bests in points per game (11.9), rebounds per game (eight) and minutes played per game (26.8) in his sixth NBA season. But Hill’s statistics have declined since February and he has averaged only four PPG in April.

“I don’t know what he does in the summer time to get ready for the season,” Scott said. “But whatever it is, you have to up it. He’s got to up it. Then you have to look at what he’s eating and change eating habits as well. There’s a lot that goes into it when you’re trying to get ready for the NBA season.”

Here’s more from the Lakers and the Western Conference:

Scott said he expects the Lakers to bring back Dwight Buycks for the team’s final two games, Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders tweets. Buycks’ 10-day deal expires after tonight’s game against the Mavericks. The team can keep Buycks for the rest of the season without waiving anyone, Pincus adds (on Twitter). Buycks has made seven of nine three-pointers in five games with the Lakers.
The Timberwolves got a glimpse of how bright the future could be when rookies Zach LaVine and Andrew Wiggins each had big games Saturday as the dreadful season, from Minnesota’s perspective, comes to an end, Jerry Zgoda of the Star Tribune writes. LaVine had 37 points and nine rebounds, both career-bests, and Wiggins added a career-high nine assists in Saturday’s loss against the Warriors.

Pacific Notes: Lin, Black, Kings

April 12th, 2015 at 10:29am CST by Arthur Hill

Jeremy Lin‘s time with the Lakers may be just about done, writes Baxter Holmes of ESPN.com. Lin has missed two straight games with an aching left knee, and although he could return before this season is done, prospects don’t look good for next season. Neither Lin, who will be a free agent this summer, nor coach Byron Scott has publicly addressed the situation, but Scott said the guard had an “up and down” season. Lin, who made $14.9MM this year after being acquired from the Rockets in an offseason deal, has been a frequent target of criticism from Scott and teammate Kobe Bryant.

There’s more from the Pacific Division:

The outlook is much different for Lakers rookie Tarik Black, according to Joey Ramirez of Lakers.com. Black, who was claimed off waivers from the Rockets earlier this season, leads all rookies in field goal percentage and is third in rebounds, and his future in Los Angeles seems bright. “This is probably the most growth I’ve had in a single season since I started playing basketball,” he said.
After taking over as Kings coach in midseason, George Karl is looking forward to the offseason to begin putting his stamp on the team, according to Ailene Voisin of The Sacramento Bee. Although there was opposition to it from inside the organization, Karl’s hiring may have brought stability to an unsettled organization. “We have to forget about the blame game, about who is this, who is that, and figure out who we are and what we want to become,” Karl said. “We have a very, very important summer ahead of us.”

Pacific Rumors: Thornton, Lakers, Bogut

April 11th, 2015 at 5:29pm CST by Dana Gauruder

Marcus Thornton has not improved his free agent outlook since he was dealt to the Suns at the trade deadline, Paul Coro of The Arizona Republic reports. The Suns only acquired Thornton to facilitate the Isaiah Thomas trade to the Celtics, which allowed them to acquire the Cavaliers’ 2016 first-round pick in the multi-team deal, Coro explains. Thornton, who becomes an unrestricted free agent after the season, has only appeared in nine games since the deal and has been battling a left Achilles’ tendon injury, Coro adds. That has rendered Thornton as a non-rotation player on a non-playoff team, which is not the best way to head into the free agent market, Coro points out.

In other news around the Pacific Division:

Wesley Matthews, Omer Asik and Khris Middleton are some of the free agents that the Lakers should consider pursuing this summer, Jesse Blancarte of Basketball Insiders opines. The Lakers should target free agents like Matthews and Asik that still have several productive years remaining and could be signed at a reasonable price, as well as budding talents like Middleton, Blancarte continues. What the Lakers should avoid is appeasing Kobe Bryant by signing quick-fix, high-priced free agents like Rajon Rondo, since the Lakers are a long way from contention, Blancarte adds. The club also needs to re-think its offensive strategy and embrace the 3-point shot by bringing in some long-range shooters that can space the floor, Blancarte argues.
Andrew Bogut‘s gamble when he signed an incentive-laden, three-year extension prior to last season is paying off, Antonio Gonzalez of the Associated Press writes. The Warriors center will play his 65th game of the season Saturday night, fulfilling one of the requirements for a potential bonus. Bogut’s deal calls for him to earn a 15% bonus — or approximately $1.93MM this year — any season he plays at least 65 games and is named to the NBA’s First or Second All-Defensive Team, Gonzalez continues. Bogut leads the league in defensive plus-minus rating, Gonzalez adds.
James Michael McAdoo was recalled by the Warriors on Saturday after he helped the D-League’s Santa Cruz Warriors win a playoff series over the Oklahoma City Blue, the team’s website reports. McAdoo has appeared in 14 games with Golden State this season, averaging 3.9 points and 2.6 rebounds in 8.6 minutes. He had 25 points and 13 rebounds in Santa Cruz’s clinching win over the Blue on Friday.